Sliming Rick Perlstein: Live from La Farine CXXXVI: August 11, 2014

Rick Perlstein has a new book... and he’s facing completely spurious charges of plagiarism.... The people making the charges--almost all of whom have, surprise, movement conservative connections--aren’t pointing to any actual passages that, you know, were lifted.... Instead, they’re claiming that Perlstein paraphrased what other people said.... Can I say, I’m familiar with this process? There was a time when various of the usual suspects went around claiming that I was doing illegitimate things with jobs data; what I was doing was in fact perfectly normal--but that didn’t stop Daniel Okrent, the outgoing public editor, from firing a parting shot (with no chance for me to reply) accusing me of fiddling with the numbers. I also heard internally that there were claims of plagiarism directed at me, too, but evidently they couldn’t cook up enough stuff to even pretend to make that stick. The thing to understand is that fake accusations of professional malpractice are a familiar tactic for these people. And this tactic should be punctured by the press, not given momentum with 'opinions differ on shape of the planet' reporting."

Offenders who owe Rick Perlstein a full and immediate retraction and apology include:

Comments

Rick Perlstein has a new book... and he’s facing completely spurious charges of plagiarism.... The people making the charges--almost all of whom have, surprise, movement conservative connections--aren’t pointing to any actual passages that, you know, were lifted.... Instead, they’re claiming that Perlstein paraphrased what other people said.... Can I say, I’m familiar with this process? There was a time when various of the usual suspects went around claiming that I was doing illegitimate things with jobs data; what I was doing was in fact perfectly normal--but that didn’t stop Daniel Okrent, the outgoing public editor, from firing a parting shot (with no chance for me to reply) accusing me of fiddling with the numbers. I also heard internally that there were claims of plagiarism directed at me, too, but evidently they couldn’t cook up enough stuff to even pretend to make that stick. The thing to understand is that fake accusations of professional malpractice are a familiar tactic for these people. And this tactic should be punctured by the press, not given momentum with 'opinions differ on shape of the planet' reporting."